Housekeeping

I just switched hosts for this site. There may be funkiness until things settle with domain name pointing. Comments are disabled on old site, Enabled on this site. I’ll change some settings in the next 12 hours or so to make everything points to the (moved) domain name, and not the temporary name on the new server. Thanks for your patience.

Questions! We get questions. Today, I got a question that went something like this: “Do you know of a resource for interviews? I’m going to interview my parents.” For interviewing tips, be sure to check out the Interview category of posts here. There are a ton, there.

The question also tells me that it’s getting time to do a redesign to make things easier to find here. Any thoughts or suggestions you have about the site, please chime in at the comments. Thanks!

UPDATE: Got a good comment to this post: where to find a list of qusetions? Best and quickest place, hands down, is the StoryCorps question generator.

A quick personal note. I’ve had a bad back attack. Pain while sitting kept me away from dedicated computer tasks (and dedicated computer tasks are what brought on the pain). If you’re reading this, you’re probably sitting in front of a computer. Stop a moment and stretch!

BlogHer is this week; I’m leading a session on podcasting for beginners. Have been working like crazy on it.

Hope to have a new video treat on the front page of this site. (that old article has been there too too long) Plus (gasp! at long last!) some How-to stuff! I’ve been delving into making how-to movies, and can’t wait to adapt what I’ve done for Podcast instruction to use for how-to instruction. Plus, I hope to have a new podcast from discussion of BlogHers (and BlogHims) who attend there (there = San Jose, CA).

I’m doing taxes this week, so postings will be few. When I do post, chalk it up to procrastination. One upside in my messy method madness: I just found my misplaced copy of John Neuenschwander’s Oral History and the Law, which I’d been searching for for the last coupla weeks. (And I created the “housekeeping” category for posts I make about the site itself. Painfully true, here!)

Preparations underway. The podcast is mostly finished. I’ll need to set up a specific feed, and upload it its “final destination” –ourmedia.org, I hope. Re-learn old stuff (Everything takes longer than you think). Learn new stuff: What’s that curve? How can I make it go away? It’s DC offset , which happens when recording on portable digital media–in this case, an iPod. New stuff will find its way into a lengthier explanation here at a later date.

It’s all a matter of working with digital audio, to be sure. There’s a happy overlap for podcasters to apply their equipment and skills to family history. But there are differences, too.

When doing a family history and thinking about the final output, I mentally apply the 80-year test: Will this be readable and findable 80 years from now? Why 80 years? well… if you see that small stack of letters in the sidebar, those are from a family attic. Postmarked in the 1920s and 1930s. 80-plus years later, I can read them, after a bit of puzzling out handwriting qualities. What about the person 80 years from now?

Family Stories. Everyone has 'em.

They tell where you come from. They hold secrets to who you are. This site explores how to use digital tools and media to record and preserve spoken memories of family members. Your host: Susan A. Kitchens (I got into this by talking to my grandpa; at the time he was 99 years old.)